Renewable energy sources integrated with electric power supply in manufacturing companies: A management model

In this paper, the authors, consistent with the philosophy of Sustainable Manufacturing, propose a generalized methodology for replacing/supplementing traditional energy sources with renewable energy sources (RES). The methodology, developed stochastically, makes extensive use of Discrete Event Simulation and the Monte Carlo method to optimize, for each hour of operation, the ratio of production from RES to supply from traditional sources. The final output is summarized as a cumulative distribution function of the hourly lack of power produced by RES compared to system demands. In this way, the manager can, sufficiently in advance, select the most appropriate procurement strategy.